Using Specialty Papers with Love on the Rocks

Hello crafters! Joan Bardee here and I’m excited to share with you the fantastic Love on the Rocks Collection. The collection consists of a gorgeous floral BetterPress Letterpress cover plate, a sentiment set, and one die set that focuses on a cut glass with ice cubes, hearts and strawberries. The collection is perfect for Valentine’s Day or any occasion where you want to send some love.

The 3 cards I’m sharing today each use one of the many Spellbinders specialty papers. I’ve had these for quite some time and decided it was time to play with them. Two of my cards use specialty papers over the entire card front, and one uses just a touch of specialty paper. I hope you enjoy the cards as much as I enjoyed making them.

Specialty Papers

“Specialty paper” is as any paper that isn’t traditional cardstock – vellum, acetate, metallic, brushed, patterned, BetterPress Letterpress, etc. If you are like me, you have many specialty papers in your stash. My motto is “Don’t hoard, use.”

Interested in learning more about paper? Check out Paper Crafting Myth Busters, Episode #1, where Yana Smakula and Denzil Quick, both from Spellbinders, discuss paper, including some specialty papers, in depth. It’s a fascinating discussion.

Hot Foil on Floating Glimmer Specialty Clear Film Sheets

Spellbinders Glimmer Specialty Clear Film Sheets + Glimmer Foil? That’s all you need to create a card that will have folks asking, “How did you do that?”  (Make sure you use the Glimmer Specialty Clear Film Sheets and not the Clear Acetate Sheets for this technique. Only the former is heat resistant.)

• Trim Spellbinders Glimmer Specialty Clear Film Sheet to an A2 size (4.25” x 5.5”).
• Trim Opaque White foil to cover My Heart Beats for You BetterPress plate.
• Using Best Ever Craft Tape, adhere the foil and My Heart Beats for You plate to the clear film and run through your Glimmer machine.
• Peel off the hot foil.
• Set aside this miracle of art and technology.
• Hot foil a sentiment from My Heart Beats for You with Black Opaque foil onto a scrap of white cardstock.
• Die cut the sentiment into a heart shape using the included die.
• Trim white cardstock to A2 size and blend red ink in the center and pink ink around the edges.
• Put together card: Flip over the foiled panel and adhere foam tape to the ink-blended cardstock panel (see photo below). Then adhere to an A2 folded card.
• Adhere heart-shaped sentiment on top of the clear film sheet with more foam tape.
• Celebrate!

TIP: Plan where you will adhere your foiled clear film to a card base or panel. You can see in the photo below that I placed the foam tape on the back side of the clear film under the spot for the sentiment.

Finally, look how thick Spellbinders Glimmer Specialty Clear Film is. This is what makes it special.

Cascading Strawberries on Brushed White Cardstock

The built-in shine (so hard to photography but it is there) on the Brushed White cardstock is so elegant and adds interest to this simple design.

• Color a small piece of Brushed White cardstock with a brown alcohol marker (or ink blend brown ink) onto the cardstock.
• Die cut the pieces of the strawberries from the Love on the Rocks Etched Dies from various shades of red, pink, Brushed White (plain and chocolate-colored), and green cardstocks. You can make them one color or vary them – you are the gardener here!
• BetterPress the sentiments from Valentine Happy Hour Sentiments BetterPress Plate & Die Set with Black BetterPress ink onto Brushed White cardstock and die cut.
• Run the sentiment die through your Platinum 6 again with white scrap paper so you have 2 layers for your sentiment. Adhere the sentiment to the card with foam tape.
• Assemble all the strawberries.
• Adhere the berries with foam tape around the sentiment so that they look like they are falling from top right to left bottom
• Die cut the tiny hearts from Love on the Rocks Etched Dies from pink cardstock and place as embellishments.
• Add a few black dots with an alcohol-based marker.
• Adhere the finished panel to an A2 side folded card base.

Tip: Adhere the sentiment first – it’s easier to fit the strawberries around the sentiment than trying to squeeze in a sentiment amongst the berries. Have a couple of berries bleed off the edge to create the illusion of movement.

Dramatic Tone on Tone with Metallic Accents

Earlier this year, Spellbinders released a fabulous collection of metallic papers called Treasured Cardstock. They come in 3 different collections – gold, rose gold, and silver. Each pack has 3 sheets of 5 different metallic papers. They are amazing – the glitter paper cuts easily and leaves no residue. Each paper has a different level of shine. If you like metallic papers, these are a must.

• Hot foil the My Heart Beats for You BetterPress plate using an A2 piece of Onyx cardstock and Black hot foil.
• Hot foil a sentiment from Parcel & Post Christmas Mailbox Greetings with Gold foil onto Onyx cardstock. (This item is no longer in stock but the Parcel & Post Clear Sentiments with the same (and many more) sentiments is available at the time of my writing.)
• Die cut the sentiment with the coordinating die in Parcel & Post Mailbox.
• Trim a piece of Gold Glitter Metallic cardstock slightly larger than the sentiment and the sentiment to it.
• Adhere the sentiment panel to the Glitter cardstock with Bearly Arts glue.
• Adhere that panel with foam tape to cover the heart in the design.
• Adhere the entire front panel to an A2 Onyx cardstock (trim a rectangle of white cardstock for the interior of the card).
• Adhere gold embellishments for more sparkle.
• Elegant and easy!

TIP: Changing the sentiment transformed the My Heart Beats for You plate from love/Valentines to Christmas. Pick any sentiment that will cover the heart shape in the plate and go to town. I made a non-holiday version of this card in red on red that I will share on my Instagram account.

TIP: When using metallic papers, look through your stash for sentiments that refer to the properties of those papers – sparkle, shine, glimmer, glow, etc.

Spellbinders Supplies:

Other Supplies

Inks, brown alcohol marker; black Sharpie pen, paper trimmer, foam tape.